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Cuban Tody | Todus multicolor
Cubaanse todie | Cartacuba
The Cuban Tody is one of five todies, a family of small, short-winged birds found only in the Greater Antilles. It sits motionless for long spells on a thin twig with the bill tilted upwards, then darts suddenly at an insect on the underside of a leaf. In Cuba it is called cartacuba or, after its call, pedorrera.
Voice
A soft rolling pprreee-pprreee, the source of the local name pedorrera, and a dry tot-tot-tot-tot from the perch.
Recording: Zsombor Károlyi — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm, compact, with a large head, short tail and a long flat bill that is black above and red below. The upperparts are bright glossy green, the throat red and the lores yellow. On the side of the neck there is a blue patch. The underparts are pale grey, the flanks pink. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
No other tody occurs in Cuba. Cuban Emerald Riccordia ricordii is also green, but has a thin straight bill and hovers at flowers. The other four todies live in Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola and do not occur in Cuba.
Habitat
A generalist of almost all forest types in Cuba: dry lowland forest and coastal scrub, semi-evergreen and moist forest, pine forest, the limestone forest of the mogotes and the vegetation along streams and rivers, from sea level high into the mountains. It forages in the lower and middle storeys for small insects and spiders. It nests in a self-dug tunnel about 30 cm long in a steep bank of clay or earth, with a chamber at the end.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Only in Cuba and the islands off the Cuban coast, across the whole island wherever there is forest or scrub. The species does not occur outside Cuba.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In almost any forest in Cuba, for example on the Zapata Peninsula and in the Sierra del Rosario. The call is the best lead; the bird itself often sits still at eye level and is noticed only when it moves. Steep, bare banks along forest tracks are the place to look for nest tunnels.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is common and occurs in a wide range of forest types, including secondary forest and scrub.
Scientific name
Todus multicolor | Gould, 1837
Gould described the species in 1837 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Todus was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Todus is a Latin word for a small bird, mentioned by the playwright Plautus and the grammarian Festus. multicolor is Latin for 'many-coloured', after the green, red, yellow, blue and pink plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from western Cuba (designated later).